Ctrl, Alt, Shift + arrow keys

[zyedidia]

This pull request adds bindings for ctrl, alt, and shift + arrows. Here are the current bindings I plan on using.

shift+arrows: select
alt+arrows (left and right): move by word
alt+shift+arrows: select by word
ctrl+arrows (left and right): move to beginning and end of lines
ctrl+arrows (up and down): move to beginning and end of file
ctrl+shift+arrows: select according to movement

Let me know if you think the keybindings should be different.

Ref #21.

[benadamstyles]

ctrl+arrows: move by line

Do you mean move the cursor, or move actual lines of text? I don't think you need a special keybinding to move the cursor by line – you can just use the up and down arrows right? Or am I missing something?

[zyedidia]

I'll reword it to be more clear. I mean move the cursor to the start and end of lines.

[benadamstyles]

Ah ok yep that makes sense, sorry, don't know why I didn't read it that way!

[bendem]

alt+arrows (left and right): move by word
ctrl+arrows (left and right): move to beginning and end of lines

Never seen that behavior on windows or linux. There, it's ctrl+arrows to move by word, alt+arrows doesn't do anything.

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Also, I tested this branch. At the moment, ctrl+arrows does nothing and alt+arrows inserts [1;3C or [1;3D.

[zyedidia]

Ok, that's good to know. Ctrl keys don't do anything on the branch yet, but it seems like alt sends a different keycode on Linux than on Mac.

It seems like the alt+arrows keycodes are not consistent across terminals, so it might be better to use ctrl+arrows instead.

[aravindet]

Linux and Windows applications use ctrl+left/right to move to the previous/next word break, and holding down shift selects according to the cursor movement.

There aren't any universal conventions around alt+arrows or ctrl+up/down. On my current machine (GTK):

1. text area widgets do not move the cursor when Alt is pressed, and ignore the Ctrl and move normally on up/down.
2. In Gedit, Ctrl+Up goes to the beginning of the previous line, Ctrl+Down goes to the end of the next line, and Alt+Left/right move the current word (i.e. swaps it with the previous/next word), Alt+Up/Dn moves the current line.
3. In Atom, Alt+Left/Right work almost the same as Ctrl+Left/Right, except for treating underscores as word boundaries. Ctrl+Up/Down moves the current line.

I suspect that these are rarely used, so Ctrl+Left/Right and Shift should cover 99% of use cases.

[benadamstyles]

On Mac, Ctrl+arrows is sometimes used to switch desktops/spaces. Will there be the option to set Cmd keybindings instead for Mac? On Mac, Cmd tends to occupy the conceptual space taken by Ctrl on Linux and Windows, i.e. it is used "inside" apps whereas Ctrl is often used for system level commands.

[Adurol]

ctrl+arrows (left and right): move to beginning and end of lines
ctrl+arrows (up and down): move to beginning and end of file

Alternative would be to use Pos1 and End keys:

ctrl + pos1 = jump to beginning of the file
ctrl + end = jump to end of the file

Pressing shift too would select the text from current cursor position until beginning (pos1) or end (end) of the file. This is how the most editor/offices suits I know do it.

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I agree with using ctrl+arrows (left and right) to jump by word, too.

[zyedidia]

@Leeds-eBooks Unfortunately, it is impossible to detect Cmd key presses, so that is not possible. See #19.

[benadamstyles]

Ah yes ok. Are you planning to make these keybindings configurable, like those already in micro? If so then all we're talking about is the defaults so it doesn't really matter too much.

[zyedidia]

Yeah, all these keybindings will be configurable.

[zyedidia]

The current keybindings are as follows:

{
    "ShiftLeft":      "SelectLeft",
    "ShiftRight":     "SelectRight",
    "AltLeft":        "WordLeft",
    "AltRight":       "WordRight",
    "AltShiftRight":  "SelectWordRight",
    "AltShiftLeft":   "SelectWordLeft",
    "CtrlLeft":       "StartOfLine",
    "CtrlRight":      "EndOfLine",
    "CtrlShiftLeft":  "SelectToStartOfLine",
    "CtrlShiftRight": "SelectToEndOfLine",
    "CtrlUp":         "CursorStart",
    "CtrlDown":       "CursorEnd",
    "CtrlShiftUp":    "SelectToStart",
    "CtrlShiftDown":  "SelectToEnd",
}

You can rebind these however you'd like using the bindings.json file.